The first act of the Hesiodian birth
narrative, the marriage and pregnancy of Metis (Goddess of wise counsel),
receives what must now be considered unquestionable corroboration through
the facts of the cult of Athena Meter and through stories such as the marriage
and pregnancy of the Athena priestess Aithra: the terms "Metis" and "Mother"
describe an aspect of Pallas Athena herself. How does this relate to the
patriarchal, maidenly aspect of the Goddess, to the classical image of
the virginal Athena?

It has been maintained that this is
the result of a relatively late development, with the "Parthenos"
seen as entering the picture as the Greeks moved through a refinement
of taste toward classicism: "Parthenos" replaced "Meter" without being
able wholly to suppress it. Such a development presupposes that virginity
would have enjoyed greater respect than motherhood in the high period of
Greek history, particularly in Athens. But this is by no means the case.
According to our sources, Athena is first addressed as "Mother" by Euripides,
but this should not lead us to the false conclusion that she was not worshipped
in this aspect earlier. The signs of the worship of the Mistress of the
Acropolis in Athens as a maternal Goddess who was closer to women appear
in her unarmed representations, above all in the work of Endoios -- granting
that the identification of the seated statue in the Acropolis Museum is
correct. His statue creates a matronly effect, even though her bosom is
bedecked with the aegis and the Gorgoneum -- the frightening goatskin and
the grotesque face. The image of the armed, masculine-minded maiden is,
however, also old, older than Homer for whom it is a given premise. The
arms, the virginity, and the masculine character are expressed mythologically
as direct descent from the father -- these three elements together present
a unified, unmistakable, distinct totality.

The worship of a divine Virgin does
not suggest a later style on Greek soil than worship of a divine Mother.
To the enduring residue of ancient Cretan mythology belongs the image of
the "sweet virgin" Britomartis, called by this name in the pre-Greek language
of the great island. On the northern periphery of the Greek world, on the
Black Sea and in Thrace, there is evidence of the cult of a Goddess no
more specifically named than "Parthenos," who was comparable to the warlike
maiden Athena. This Goddess who, judging from the style of her cult, was
"barbaric" (i.e., remained archaic), was equated with Artemis, and with
Athena on the island of Lemnos, and on the Bosphorus where she bore the
name Chryse. The virginity of a Goddess is therefore certainly not the
product of a relatively late and exclusively Greek development. In the
case of the Thracian-Pontic Parthenos, this feature is so strongly emphasized
and placed in the foreground that a reason such as has been advanced to
explain the virginity of the Greek Goddesses would hardly suffice. As this
explanation has it, Goddesses who have their own well-defined meaning and
function will not tolerate husbands beside them. They are much too independent
to be subordinate to a man. This is meant to be valid not only for Athena,
but for Demeter, Artemis, Hestia, and even Aphrodite as well. Either they
remain virginal, or they casually bind themselves to a God or to a hero
and bear him a child if such suits their nature.

In agreement with this conception,
which justly stresses the particular, unmistakable nature of the
individual Goddesses, stands a noteworthy psychological conception
of virginity. As this conception is formulated, the woman who is
psychologically virginal is independent. She is what she is, regardless
of whether she belongs to a man or not. In itself it would be possible
that such virginity, which is a form of feminine existence that can represent
a valid experience of the soul, would have appeared to the Greeks as the
defining characteristic of a Goddess. Above all others Aphrodite would
come under consideration here. She, however, was considered by the Greeks
not to be a virgin. Of three other Goddesses, on the contrary, it is explicitly
maintained that they never had anything to do with love: Athena, Artemis,
and Hestia. Of these only Hestia does not relate to another God in such
a way that virginity could be explained as independence more than as the
opposite of independence. The virginity of Goddesses such as Artemis and
Athena, who are more clearly defined images than is Hestia, differs according
to the nature of these divine Virgins and contains much more that is positive
than merely the negativity implied by independence itself. In the instance
of Artemis, it conceals in itself the untamable wildness of a particular
age of maidenhood along with the closest relationship to the brother; in
the case of Athena, it contains the unconquerable determination of the
masculinely oriented battle Goddess along with the closest relationship
to the father.

It is the image of the armed and terrifying
maiden that is associated with the birth from the head of Zeus. The Iliad
alludes to this mythologem. Ares reproaches Zeus for giving birth to such
a daughter and describes at the same time her terrifying force in battle.
In his rage he gives her the epithet aphron ("crazed," "frantic"),
by which he calls into question any association she might have to prudence
and wise counsel. This means, though, that Athena's close connection
to Metis was very familiar to the poet and to his audience. It was precisely
at her epiphany from the head of the father [Image: The
birth of Athena by Group E Painter] that her quality as a Goddess
of war came to the fore, and this is equally true in all three classical
passages which testify to this form of birth. Hesiod, who at the
beginning of his list of Zeus's spouses told of the swallowing of
Metis, describes the epiphany at the conclusion of the list:

Then from his head, by himself,
he produced Athena of the gray eyes,
great Goddess, weariless,
waker of battle noise, leader of armies
a Goddess queen who delights in war cries, onslaughts
and battles.
(Hesiod, Theogony 924-25)

Pindar authenticates another vivid
but unclassical and rather archaic feature of the mythologem, i.e.,
Hephaestus' help at the birth, which he effected through a blow to
the head of Zeus with his crescent-moon ax [Image: The
birth of Athena by Phrynos Painter]. Whereupon, "Athena sprang from
the skull of Zeus with an earth-shattering battle-cry, so that the heavens
and the mother earth shook." The poet of the 28th Homeric Hymn, using the
same poetic style, seeks to give the complete account. Present in his description,
too, are the epithets associated with Metis. In this epiphany, however,
the other martial aspect of Athena comes more clearly to the fore: she
is born from the sacred head, clad in armor of resplendent gold; all the
Gods are awed by her appearance as she leaps before aegis-bearing Zeus
from his immortal head, brandishing the sharp-pointed spear; great Olympus
quakes under the force of the owl-eyed Goddess; the earth all about resounds
deeply and the sea heaves in an uproar of dark-colored waves, the ocean's
tides burst over the shores, and for a long while, until Pallas Athena
finally removes the divine armor from her shoulders, Hyperion's heavenly
son allows the sun's horses to stand still. In conclusion the poet of the
Hymn once more alludes to the Metis aspect, when he adds: "And Zeus the
God replete with wise counsel, rejoiced."

Belonging also to the martial aspect
of Athena is her association with the war God, Ares, an association that
cannot be simply judged as one of enmity. They are bound to one another
also through rivalry, and Ares betrays his jealousy when he reproves Zeus
for giving birth to this "foolish, dangerous daughter." The superiority
is of course Athena's: as the two of them confront each other on the battlefield,
the Goddess strikes her opponent with a boulder. These are examples of
a negative association. On the shield of Achilles, however, it was shown
how Ares and Athena, a similarly disposed and constituted pair, jointly
led forth the departing warriors. One may speak of an ambivalent relationship:
for Homer the rivalry weighs heavier, while in the cult the positive association
is highlighted much more. In Attica, Ares was the beloved of a figure who
stood in a particularly close association to Athena: Aglaurus. We are not
completely informed about the secret love affair, but we do know of an
exact parallel, the identical case with a somewhat altered name: Tritaia.
A priestess of Athena like Aithra, and according to her name clearly a
representative of Tritogeneia herself, Tritaia became the divine Ancestress
of the Achaean town of the same name after she bore to the war God the
founder of the city, Melanippos. From the association of Ares and Aglaurus,
a daughter was born who was the exact double of her mother, yet with a
name much like that of Melanippos, ("he with the black stallion," or "a
black stallion") belonging to a level of Greek mythology in which the horse
rules as the characteristic animal. The mother, Aglaurus, was connected
to the serpent; the daughter, Alcippe, was according to her name like a
courageous mare.

The facts of the cult which remain
still to be mentioned here indicate the association of the Goddess with
Ares and with militant youth: the oath of arms of the Athenian Epheboi
was sworn in the sanctuary of Aglaurus, and during this ceremony the God
of war was addressed by two names. On the Areopagus, the hill across from
the Acropolis, an altar was dedicated to Athena Areia -- the "Athena of
Ares" -- and in the temple of Ares stood a statue of Athena and one of
the battle Goddess, Enyo, two related images. Through the first part of
her name (derived from alke, "defensive power and courage," and
from alalkein, "to defend"), Alcippe, who besides being the daughter
of Aglaurus was also the wife of Metion, the ancestor of the Metionidai,
was associated with a series of epithets for Athena which point to the
north, in the direction of the Thracian-Pontic Parthenos: Alalcomene and
Alalcomeneis were the names of the Goddess in her Boeotian town of Alalcomenai,
named after her, and in her Macedonian town of Pella she was Alcidemus.
The weapons of the Goddess -- helmet, lance, shield -- serve both the purposes
of defense and of frightening away, as do the aegis and the Gorgoneum.
In this, her frightening-away defensive aspect is allied with her maternal,
protective aspect.

The discovery of a painted limestone
plate in Mycenae bearing the representation of a shield-bearing Goddess
and two feminine devotees testifies to the great age of this image and
to its validity for Mycenean culture. Perseus as well, the hero and protégé
of Athena with a pre-Greek, mythological name, belongs to the territory
of this same culture. Against the opinion that this Mycenean representation
was the oldest image of Athena, the objection was raised that the painted
plate actually shows primarily the powerful figure-eight-formed shield,
behind which the Goddess is hidden. One shield alone discloses very little
of what Pallas Athena meant to the Greeks and nothing at all of the essence
we confront in the mythology of the Goddess and in her cults behind a continuous
recurring duality of aspects. "Only the 'bright-eyed intelligence' capable
of discerning the decisive element at every juncture and of supplying the
most effective instrumentality is an adequate characterization of her ideal"
-- this is how Otto sought to grasp the essence of the Goddess. "Consummation,
the immediate present, action here and now -- that is Athena." Or again:
"She is the spirited immediacy, redeeming spiritual presence, swift action.
She is the ever-near" (Otto, The Homeric Gods). These insights
represent an advance in the understanding of the Goddess, beyond the concept
which identified the Goddess with divine "Providence," and beyond the concept
of a Mycenean palace Goddess as well, which, while being historically valid,
left it without religious content.

Otto's formulations still do not,
however, give sufficient definition to the essential core of the rich manifestation
that was the historical Pallas Athena. Even in Mycenean times this manifestation
may have been more multifaceted than the painting of that time could indicate.
The quality of being "one who is ever near" and the Goddess of wise counsel
belongs to a particular aspect of Athena, one that is not identical with
the martial and virginal qualities. Hers is the sagacity of a mother who
is completely focused on the father and oriented to father-right, a motherly
sagacity that does not give itself arbitrarily to everyone. From the outside,
at least since Mycenean times, Athena was a fear-inspiring battle Goddess,
but she had her favorite heroes, her favorite warriors, and her favorite
towns, all of whom she guided with maternal care. The maternal associations
are hidden behind the image of martial maiden, but they do not contradict
it. The inner contradiction of the figure is nonetheless undeniable: it
lies in the representation of a virginal mother.